My own selfishness

My own selfishness

I keep saying that my situation with my daughter’s suicide has led me into a place where I never know what tomorrow will be like, or what tomorrow will bring. I believe this is my own selfishness at work. What it really means is that my life is not set in stone. There is no more “wake up, get up, feed the kids, get the kids ready, get to work”. I do not even know from day-to-day if I will go to sleep.

Realizing it

Tonight I was hit with this story. Which showed me where I am selfish in my thought pattern. That same story honestly holds true for everyone in this world. No one knows what tomorrow, or even the next hour will bring. I do not watch the voice. I have heard of Christina Grimmie. I have read and watched a lot of videos from the show on her. I know that her one goal was to inspire others. That was her purpose in life. Not that much unlike my own. Her passion was music. Her passion was to make people love life, and feel like they can do anything they want to do.

Instead, sadly she had her life taken from her in its absolute prime — with no way to go but up. I have not gotten much into why this happened. From the very small bit that I watched, the person involved believed that he was going to marry to her. There was obviously mental illness involved.

The state of mental health

The state of mental health care in this country is absolutely abysmal in many ways. I have met some very big innovators. I have met some innovators who push to hard to make it competition, I honestly believe their work ultimately will go unnoticed in the end. I have made friends with people who I believed would never do anything but look down on me. Why would a person who hold’s a doctorate in anything ever look at a person who dropped out of high school and college to run a mainframe for the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation? I was nothing but an old-school computer geek. Now though, on the grassroots level innovations in suicide prevention are coming from advocacy groups and hackers alike in ways that were never dreamed of only a few years ago. We are looking at data, we are hoping for predictive models. We are really hoping to turn the field of suicide prevention upside down and actually make the numbers that have almost constantly been on the rise turn around and go the other way.

Innovation and collaboration that actually bring on change

When we can make changes like that in a field like suicide prevention that involves mental illness and depression, it is just a matter of time before the same types of technology, strategies, and principles that we at the grassroots level worked with those PhD’s who are giving us so much more attention than they used to can begin to look into other areas of mental illness… and begin to focus on mental wellness instead.

The overall picture

When we reach that point, events like this, not just involving celebrities, but regular people like you and me will start to decline as well. Mass shootings will begin to decrease instead of just continue. We will begin to see random violence decrease. When we reach that point, the same (not to be cliché with my wording here) types of technology, strategies, and principles that we at the grassroots level push out that seem to attract those PhD’s can begin to move into other areas like substance abuse and addiction. That will lead to changes in all sorts of areas, from crime levels to gang activity, to homelessness, overdoses, etc…

Again, overall… Working Together (which is one of our primary focuses that we PUSH at By Chaney’s Hands) will bring the world to reach a point that we can stop focusing on “mental illness” and start focusing on “mental wellness”.

None of this will happen overnight. It will take years to get to where we want to see things.